Broward `Dynasty` Ruled Drug Ring, Investigators Say

Richard ``Bear`` Joseph was but an apprentice drug dealer in the biggest heroin and cocaine ring in Florida in the 1970s.

He worked the streets, selling small doses to junkies. He studied the system and learned his lessons well, police said.

Then in 1979, Joseph`s boss, Edward T. Forcer, and many of his subordinates were arrested and accused of participating in a $40-million-a-year drug organization.

In 1980, Forcer was murdered while out on bond awaiting trial, leaving a gaping hole at the top of the heroin organization.

For his minor role in Forcer`s organization, Joseph served a 1/2-year prison term in 1981 and 1982. He emerged an aspiring drug kingpin, police said.

Proof of his success was revealed last week, they said.

In a federal indictment unsealed Tuesday, Joseph was named the leader of one of the largest heroin smuggling and selling operations in the state. He was indicted on charges of running a continuing criminal enterprise. Twenty-two people, including his wife and two of his girlfriends, were indicted along with him.

``All he did was step in and provide for the junkies` needs,`` said Detective Alvin Pollock of the Broward Sheriff`s Office Organized Crime Division. ``He knew the contacts because he was a go-fer before. There was no outside pressure, because everyone else was in jail.``

Along the way, he acquired the material trappings most commonly associated with Fortune 500 presidents -- including Mercedes and BMW automobiles that impressed his neighbors in the Carver Ranches section of south Broward County and his drug customers in the Overtown section of Miami, police said.

Six days a week, taking Sundays off to go to church with his wife and several of his children, Joseph sold heroin from his stores, both called ``My Children`s Place,`` in Overtown, police said.

His subordinates, some of who were on work release from the Dade County Jail, would take orders for heroin on a pay phone outside the beige, one-story building, run to a stash house two blocks away from Joseph`s grocery and coin laundry and then deliver the drugs to waiting customers, Pollock said.

It was a fast-drug operation, he said.

Along the way, Joseph has fathered eight children by at least four women, said Detective Danny Wright, also of the Broward Sheriff`s Office Organized Crime Division.

Four of his known children were born to girlfriends, Wright said. Joseph was a proud father who sent all his children to private schools, he said.

His eldest child, a 19-year-old son, attends college in Virginia, he said.

Of three current girlfriends, two were indicted as participants in his drug organization. His wife, Patricia Jewell Joseph, 36, was indicted on charges of perjury after testifying before a federal grand jury about the value of her home.

Matilda Hodge, who has one child by Joseph, already has been convicted on charges of heroin possession with intent to distribute and conspiracy to distribute heroin, officials said. Agents found one kilo of heroin in her apartment.

A second girlfriend, Tara Garrison, was arrested Monday night on a federal warrant on charges of distributing heroin. She is expecting a second child of Joseph`s any day, Pollock said.

Joseph also stashed heroin in the Miami apartments he shared during the week with his girlfriends, Pollock said. Joseph had keys to all his girlfriends apartments, for which he paid the rent, Pollock said.

But in the $300,000 home where he lived with his wife and four of his children, there was no sign of drugs, Pollock said.

That home, in the 4500 block of Southwest 24th Street, is in the middle of a poor, primarily black neighborhood in in south Broward.

Within the concrete wall and electronic gates at Joseph`s home were a pool, Jacuzzi, crystal chandeliers and custom-made furniture. As Joseph`s wife, Patricia, and three of his teen-age children watched Tuesday, the furnishings were loaded onto a moving van for safekeeping by federal authorities.

The home, furnishings and 16 cars belonging to Joseph and others in his organization were seized by federal agents because all were purchased with drug money, authorities said.

``He thought he could hide there,`` Pollock said of Joseph`s choice of building a fortress in a poor neighborhood.

He couldn`t hide.

It was complaints from residents of black communities such as Carver Ranches and Overtown that led law enforcement agents to Joseph, said William Yout, special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration in Miami. In 1984, the DEA, Broward Sheriff`s Office, Metro-Dade and the Miami police departments joined forces to investigate Joseph, he said.

Young men and even boys were enticed to become dealers when they saw others driving fancy cars, officials said. Others, they said, became addicted to the expensive, lethal drug and became criminals to be able to pay for their habits.